Vanguard E3 Coverage

[Caocao]

that a cam, or is it comp recording. Although I know there are cams that hook up to the v-card that don't cause lag etc. Those arn't cinematics, so its live rendered etc.

[softwillow]

Textures look good, models look good, Visually, it looks very good. The stances and animations look very odd: arms don't fall to the side naturally and the horse legs look like it is running on slippery ice. Overall, it gives me the warm feeling I had which was similar to character creation in SWG. I just hope the gameplay and story-telling elements are given as much detail and consistency. This is an opportunity for Sigil to capitalize on players that are starting to feel alienated from fantasy games that have paladins using escape pods.

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by Blargius_FR

Those nautical shots look pretty.

'...much like Erudin Harbour' was the rest of that sentence, right?

[Istros]

Originally Posted by Digits

Something with the animation system is being redone, either it's being converted or a whole new set of them are coming in. I forget, exactly. Anyway, that's why you see nothing but quick cuts to avoid putting a bold exclaimation point on the rough quality of the animations.

I hope that's the case cause from what we see in the video it looks like they used about 5 screenshots to produce each animation sequence.

Also, is it really too much to expect at this point that they'd show a random party fighting some mobs in a dungeon or an outdoor zone for like 2 minutes?

[Mazuli]

I had to check a few times to make sure I was looking at Vanguard screenshots. I swear to god I thought I was looking at Everquest 2. Especially the screenshots with the interface showing.

[Zefah]

Then I think you need to take another look at some EQ2 screenshots again. Or are you just trying to say its too brown in a roundabout way?

[Arbuste]

Looks much better than before. And extremely much better than on the computer I've seen it run on (not high end, just decent.)
Sceneries look good and even the characters look a little less retarded.

But this is not looking good. I can't help comparing it to WoW's houses and inns.

[Laerazi]

Doesn't look like the game has very many hand-textured meshes, it's all repeating patterns.

[tjac]

Align?

Command?

Explore?

Succeed?

Please?

[Jerrith]

Originally Posted by Arbuste

Looks much better than before. And extremely much better than on the computer I've seen it run on (not high end, just decent.)
Sceneries look good and even the characters look a little less retarded.

But this is not looking good. I can't help comparing it to WoW's houses and inns.

That's a player decorated house, in that screenshot. They start off bare, and only have the objects you add to them. A similar NPC owned building would generally have more objects already present inside.

[Drauk]

Originally Posted by Zefah

Then I think you need to take another look at some EQ2 screenshots again. Or are you just trying to say its too brown in a roundabout way?

I agree VG screenshots looks like alot like EQ2. Maybe it's just a side effect of static shots, or whatever.
Love it or hate it WoW cartoon gfx have some unique looks. Both EQ2 and VG has same ultra-realisitc quality "style".

[KianwanCT]

Originally Posted by dub

Best VG pic yet. Now where are the flippin' vids?

For some reason this reminds me of Plane of Valor

[Utnayan]

Screens are screens. Beta tester's complaints are not about the graphics. They are about the gameplay and the idiotic/borish design/click fest when going into trade skills and combat, as well as quest ideas, a poor animation system, and horrid frame rates with good computers.

Let's see them put their money where their mouth is and show actual combat, or what it takes to harvest something from a tree or make an iron ignot so people can see just how retarded everything is in the gameplay department.

Fact is you won't see it. Right now Sigil has about 80% of their associate game designers that haven't even had experience in QA, much less MMORPG design. And those are the people responsible for creating the world population content and itemization of all things.

Burke is gone. Capozzi is gone. Poe is gone. In their replacement, you have fisher whose EQ involvement was laughable, Butler, whose last producing project was Luclin of all expansions, and 20 people all creating content for the game in which their last experience with video games was playing their Atari or Rygar on NES.

Protip: Hiring on the buddy system instead of qualifications makes your game suck ass.

[Soygen]

Protip: Hiring on the buddy system instead of qualifications makes your game suck ass.

It worked for WoW.

[Gar]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Protip: Hiring on the buddy system instead of qualifications makes your game suck ass.

Protip2: Having a beta thats actually an Alpha without any sort of bugtracking system available for testers leads up to same bug beign reported multiple times and makes Betatesting impossible, as testers can not follow the fixing or acknowledge process of the bug.

Protip3: Making your betaforums a fansite where every criticism is meat with "it's just beta" / "try to be constructive" and mods demanding every thread to start with "I really love your game and brad you are my hero, but.." to avoid lockup and vanboys cluttering the thread isn't smart.

Protip4: Trying to create content, balance content and design content when you don't even have a working combat system ingame or even on paper is laughable.

Does it have a future? Sure, if someone funds it for the next two years and they keep on course by first creating a combat system that actually works with all classes ingame and then tuning the content. Will it be cool? Potential is there, no doubt.

If they don't get that funding, its game over IMHO. What I have heard from friend in beta and while watching the gameplay, It's like Everquest 2 was at beta and right after launch. Idiotic design schemes, no one listening to actual beta feedback, useless bugtracking, lead designers out of ass, combat system that blows, quest system that blows, meaningless gear + add every mistake EQ2 did at launch. It took what, two years and one smart lead developer to re-design EQ2 into a decent game and they are still trying to fix the damage ingame and PR wise the original EQ2 design team did to that title. Hopefully VSOH could do this before going live.. It's just that in Vanguard there is more fucked up in idea part than "group exp debt", "horrible items", "bad class balance", "meaningless combat and broken abilities", "game is on rails" and whatnot EQ2 had.

But then again, it has moments, it has so massive potential it aint even funny. It's all down to dedication now and actually fixing stuff and listening to actual feedback.